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In July 2021, a Uyghur woman named Zeynure was at her home in Turkey's largest city when she got a desperately anticipated phone call from her husband. There had been four painful days since their last contact, when he was getting ready to board a flight to Morocco. The silence had been torturous.

But the news her husband Idris shared was more devastating. He told her that upon arrival in Morocco, he had been arrested and jailed. Authorities stated he would be sent back to China. "Call everyone who can assist me," he urged, before the line went silent.

Life as Ethnic Minority in Exile

The wife, in her early thirties, and Idris, in his late thirties, are part of the Uyghur ethnic group, which makes up about 50% of the population in China's western Xinjiang province. Over the last ten years, over a 1,000,000 Uyghurs are reported to have been imprisoned in alleged "vocational training camps," where they faced abuse for commonplace actions like going to a place of worship or wearing a headscarf.

The pair had been among many of Uyghurs who fled to Turkey during the previous decade. They thought they would find safety in their new home, but quickly found they were wrong.

"Authorities informed me that the Beijing officials threatened to close all its factories in the nation if Morocco freed him," she said.

After settling in Istanbul, Zeynure worked as an language instructor, while Idris started as a interpreter and designer, assisting to publish Uyghur media and printed works. They had three children and enjoyed free to live as Muslims.

But when one of Idris's close friends, who was employed in a library containing Uyghur books, was detained in the summer of 2021, Idris panicked. News indicated that Beijing was urging Turkey to deport Uyghurs. Idris felt vulnerable due to his prior arrest, which he suspected was connected to his work with activists and supporting Uyghur heritage. He chose to flee to Morocco, but Zeynure, whose Chinese passport had lapsed, had to stay behind with the children until her husband could request a travel document for the family.

A Costly Mistake

Departing Turkey turned out to be a terrible decision. At the Istanbul airport, border control officials took Idris aside for interrogation. "After he was eventually allowed to board the plane, he told me how happy he was that they had released him, but it felt like a trap to me," she recalled. Her worst fears were confirmed when he was removed from the plane and detained by border officials.

Over the past decade, China has been using the global police agency Interpol to pursue dissidents and had requested for Idris to be placed on the agency's high-priority "red notice list." Zeynure says Turkish officials allowed him take the flight knowing he would be arrested upon arrival in Morocco.

What happened next would convince her to do what many Uyghurs dread most: defy China, despite the consequences.

Parental Interference

Shortly after learning of her husband's arrest, Zeynure got an surprising phone call from her family in Xinjiang. She had been cut off from her family since they came to see her in Turkey in 2016 and were jailed for a few months upon their return to China.

Her parents had a disturbing message. "They told me, 'We know your husband is not with you. Maybe we can help you,'" she stated. "I realized there must be some authorities there with them and just pretended like I didn't know anything. But they insisted and told me not to do anything to help my husband. 'Don't do anything except feeding your children,' they told me. 'Don't say anything negative about China.'"

But with her husband's life at stake, the softly spoken Zeynure was not going to stay quiet. She had been raised seeing women having their head coverings forcibly removed in public by the police and had been determined to live in a country with religious freedom.

"Prior to my husband was arrested in Morocco, I didn't do anything. I was just caring for my family; I didn't even have social media or these platforms. But I had to do something to save my husband – I had to reveal the reality to the international community. Everyone knows Uyghurs deported to China will be tortured or die. They pushed me to raise my voice."

Growing Up in Xinjiang

Zeynure has different types of memories of her early years in Xinjiang. The first was of happy days spent in the countryside with her grandparents, who were farmers. "I used to play with the sheep and chickens. I don't know if I will ever have that type of chance again. The family around the house and farm. It was too wonderful, like a scene from a story."

The second was as a religious minority in Xinjiang, of vacations cut short by forced teachings of "communist songs" and being prohibited from going to the mosque or observing Ramadan.

China claims it is tackling radicalism through 'controlling unauthorized religious activities' and 'training facilities', but other countries, including the US, say its actions constitute genocide. Zeynure says she never felt able to follow her faith in Xinjiang. "Individuals who went on pilgrimage to Mecca abroad were detained and transferred to jail and told they must have some problem in their mind.

"They wanted Uyghur people to forget their faith and heritage. They said 'you should believe in us, we provided you employment and this good living here'," says Zeynure.

She finally decided to leave China after coming back home from college in Eastern China to a growing repression on religious freedoms in 2011. It was then that she was connected to Idris by one of her school friends. "She was aware we both had made the choice to go overseas and told us maybe we could meet and go as a group."

Zeynure says she was immediately reassured by Idris. "I realized he was very honest and shy, and couldn't tell lies or do anything bad. There were some Uyghur men at university who wanted to marry me, but Idris was different."

Fresh Start in Turkey

Within two months they were married and prepared to move for a different existence in Turkey. They knew it was an Islamic country with many Muslims and Uyghurs already living there, with a similar tongue and common background. "It was like Uyghurs' second home," says Zeynure. As a teacher and designer, they could also support the community in exile. "We have many kids now in China being raised without Uyghur traditions or dialect so we think it's our duty to not let it die out," she says.

But their sense of safety at finding a place of safety abroad was temporary. Beijing has become a global leader in targeting critics living in exile through the use of monitoring, threats and violence. But what Idris was subjected to was a newer tool of repression: using China's growing financial influence to force other countries to bend to its demands, including detaining and extraditing Uyghurs it wants to suppress.

Fighting for Release

After the phone call from Idris, and learning he had an Interpol alert against him, Zeynure knew she only had a limited time of opportunity to try to stop his extradition to China. She immediately contacted as many Uyghur advocacy organizations as she could find listed on the internet in Europe and the US and begged for help. She was brave despite China having already demonstrated a willingness to go after the relatives of other targets.

Zeynure started protesting with her children at the diplomatic mission in Istanbul, and posting information on online platforms. To her amazement, similar protests soon followed in Morocco demanding Idris's freedom. Moroccan officials were forced to issue a announcement saying his deportation was a matter for the judicial system to decide.

In the start of August 2021, Interpol withdrew Idris's alert after being pressed to review his case by human rights groups. But that did not stop a Moroccan court later deciding he should still be extradited to China. Zeynure says there was huge diplomatic pressure from Beijing, which made {little sense|